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'''Mikhail Bulgakov''' (1891-1940) was a Russian author. His works include ''The Master and Margarita'' (1967) and ''The Heart of a Dog'' (1968).<ref>''The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference''. Prentice Hall: New York, 1991.</ref>
'''Mikhail Bulgakov''' (1891-1940) was a Russian author. His works include ''The Master and Margarita'' (1967) and ''The Heart of a Dog'' (1968).<ref>''The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference''. Prentice Hall: New York, 1991.</ref>
==Life and Works==
Mikhail Afanashevich Bulgakov was born May 15 (Gregorian Calendar), 1891 in Kiev, Russia, the oldest of the five sons of Afanasiy Bulgakov, assistant professor at the Kiev Theological Academy.<ref name="russ">http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/mikhail-bulgakov/</ref> In 1913, he married Tatiana Nikolaevna Lappa or "Tasla," a finance minister's daughter; and in 1916, he graduated from St. Vladimir University in Kiev as a medical student and began working at many hospitals in Kiev.<ref>http://www.masterandmargarita.eu/en/01bulgakov/biografie.html</ref>
He gave up medicine for writing, first as a journalist after his working as an army doctor in a counterterrorist group.<ref name="russ" /> After journalism, he wrote ''Belaya Gvardiya'', or ''The White Guard'', about a group of Anti-Bolshevik White Guards, which was realistic and easily empathized with and thus criticized by the Communist government.<ref name="brit">"Bulgakov, Mikhail." ''Encyclopedia Britannica Online''.</ref> He reworked it into a play, ''Dni Turbinykh'', which was banned, and then wrote ''Dyavoliada'' and ''Sobachye serdtse'' ("Heart of a Dog"), criticisms of communism and pseudoscience respectively.<ref name="brit" /> ''Dyavoliada'' he also remade as a play, ''Diabolidad'', before his acquaintance with [[H.G. Wells]] and writing the science fiction works ''The Fatal Eggs'' and ''Heart of a Dog''.<ref name="russ" /> In 1930, he was officially an enemy of the government, though Josef Stalin, while rejecting his immigration plea, employed him at a local theater, where he wrote some of his greatest works as a playwright, including ''Molière'', upon the death of Molière, ''Teatralny roman'' or ''Black Snow'', an autobiography, and his greatest work, ''The Master and Margarita''.<ref name="brit" /> As a retelling of the Gospels told as a criticism of communism in an atheist Russia, it seems as an excellent conservative work, and is an fantastic tragedy resembling Gogol, but is said to be scathing and ribald.<ref name="russ" /><ref name="brit" />
His subsequent plays include ''The Cabal of Hypocrites'' and ''Pushkin (The Last Days)'', after the banishment of which he began to write librettos for the Bolshoi Ballet. He had married three times before dying of a kidney failure on March 10, 1940.<ref>https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/bulgaklc.html</ref>
==See also==
*[[Nikolai Gogol]]
==References==
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/bulgaklc.html Extensive Biography] from the Library of Congress
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bulgakov, Mikhail}}
[[Category:Russian Authors]]
[[Category:Russian Authors]]